


Problem-Solving

by Euphoric_Mandelbulb



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Accidental Death, All-Or-Nothing Thinking, Angst, Angst and Humor, Arthur-Style Narration, Canonical Character Death, Dark Comedy, Gen, Hopefully My Attempt At Arthur's Voice Is Not Offensive/Stereotypical, Humor, Humour, In-Character Narration, It... Got Away From Me; Yeah, Minor Canonical Character Death (Canon), Minor Canonical Character Death (Non-Canon), Murder, Murder Plans, Serial Killer Origins, Sorry - Off-Piste A Bit; Back Now, Sorry About That; I Got A Bit Carried Away; Sort Of Said It Without Thinking, Wanders Off-Topic At The End, manslaughter, peach schnapps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 09:57:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1774972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphoric_Mandelbulb/pseuds/Euphoric_Mandelbulb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is a very big helper.</p><p>[Edit: fixed potentially offensive tag and line in foreword. Sincere apologies to anyone to whom it caused offence - it was entirely unintentional, and I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself for not thinking it through.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Problem-Solving

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Balance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/406276) by [RuleBritannia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuleBritannia/pseuds/RuleBritannia). 



> Someone mentioned that there isn't enough cheery!dark!Arthur around. So I did my best.  
> Although I might have made him too dim and not dark enough. Er... and he ended up rather incompetent, which was exactly what that person didn't want. Oops. Sorry. I just can't write plain creepy...  
> I really, *really* hope that I've made him sound Arthur-ish, and not sterotypical.
> 
> Set throughout the series, from mid-“Boston” to immediately post-“Uskerty”. 
> 
> Spoilers (ranging from minor to major) for “Boston”, “Helsinki”, “Qikiqtarjuaq”, “Newcastle”, “Ottery St Mary”, “St Petersburg”, “Timbuktu”, “Uskerty” and “Yverdon-les-Bains”. [Later note: Zurich-compliant.]  
> Minor spoilers for “Torchwood – Miracle Day: Rendition”.
> 
> Rated T for not-very-graphic (sound and implication only) animal death. And for scary, serial-killer-in-the-making thoughts from Arthur Shappey.
> 
> Not beta'd, because I have no beta :-( Did not need Britpicking, because I am British :-)

 

Arthur _hates_ to see people cry. It makes his insides feel wobbly and his head hurt, and all he wants to do is find the nasty person who's made someone else unhappy and make them _really_ sorry.  
  
Skip's idea for making Mr Leeman sorry is _brilliant_ , much better than anything Arthur could have thought up (wait, of course it would be – Skip is clever and knows everything about planes, but Arthur can't even remember what he had for breakfast yesterday), and Arthur's looking forward to seeing Mr Leeman's horrible red face looking out of the foam all confused.  
  
Mr Leeman _dying_ is an unexpected side-effect, but it occurs to Arthur that this solves Skip's problem much better than just foaming him.  
If he'd stayed alive, Mr Leeman might have complained and made Skip sad again as revenge, and then they'd have had to punish Mr Leeman again, and they'd have gone round and round in circles; Mr Leeman was rich, and rich people can hurt you much worse than normal people, by doing things with lawyers to take away your money and your stuff and maybe even your children (although that last one might only be if you're _divorcing_ a rich person).  
If horrible rich Mr Leeman had got lawyers to take away Skip's pilot license, Skip would be _really miserable_ , and just thinking about that makes Arthur feel a bit sick so he concentrates on writing a goodbye speech for Mr Leeman instead.  
  
(That night, he writes a goodbye speech ready for when his dad dies. This cheers him up so much that he decides to write one whenever his dad upsets anybody.)  
  
  
***  
  
  
Arthur stays behind the café counter instead of going to help Skip because fighting back at someone just gets you in trouble for hitting them, and surely Douglas will do something clever to save Skip! Any minute now... any moment...  
  
Arthur hasn't heard his Mum cry for thirteen years – he'd almost forgotten that she can. She's only ever cried if D- if people were being _really_ horrible, so _her_ crying makes him angry even more than most people crying.  
  
He honestly doesn't remember until he sees the packet in the bin on the flight home that amaretti biscuits have almonds in them.  
And there's definitely something about almonds and horrible Aunt Ruth which he should know from the passenger roster but forgot, so he finds their copy and sees that horrible Aunt Ruth and horrible Cousin Kieran both have almonds listed as an allergy, like he has strawberries listed as an allergy.  
He wonders if their lips will go all tingly and funny and make them sound drunk and really posh.  
  
As they begin to descend into Fitton, his Mum comes into the galley and tells him that Carl at ATC has just passed on a message from Helsinki.  
Horrible Aunt Ruth and horrible Cousin Kieran were found suffering from anaphylactic shock - which sounds familiar, and his Mum reminds him (with that sighing sort of edge to her voice which means she's told him _loads_ of times before) that it's the thing he gets if he eats strawberries and doesn't get Strawberry Drill soon enough – and because they hadn't been found for ages (because the airport café was closed), they were very ill indeed. In fact, horrible Aunt Ruth died on the way to hospital, and horrible Cousin Kieran will be in there for quite a while.  
  
Arthur is glad that horrible Cousin Kieran is hurting, because now he'll know what it's like and won't want to hurt other people any more.  
He's not so sure whether he's glad that horrible Aunt Ruth is dead – he doesn't know if she was horrible to _everybody_ or just to him and his Mum and pilots, and she definitely wouldn't have been horrible to him and his Mum and Skip and Douglas any more because none of them were ever talking to her ever again.  
  
He asks his Mum, who tells him that horrible Aunt Ruth _is_ – she corrects herself, _was_ \- horrible to everybody. So really, Arthur decides, the only way to make things better was for her to die, which means he's accidentally done _two_ brilliant things today! Or maybe one brilliant thing in two bits. He spends a while trying to work out which, as he Hoovers G-ERTI while his Mum helps nice Uncle Philip to make funeral arrangements. But then he starts thinking about the Northern Lights again and how _brilliant_ they looked, and forgets all about it.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Mum going out with Herc is making Douglas _really_ unhappy – he hasn't cried (as far as Arthur can tell), but he keeps talking in that scary growly voice which he normally only uses when Skip's said something a bit not good. Arthur wonders whether killing Herc would help, but that would make _Mum_ cry, and anyway Herc is really nice so Arthur doesn't think he ought to die just yet.  
  
He tries to cheer Douglas up in all sorts of ways, but it doesn't seem to be working. Arthur's starting to worry about him.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Arthur hadn't realised before the meeting in St Petersburg that his Dad would be horrible to people who didn't have anything to do with an argument – he always thought that his Dad was just horrible to Mum (because Dad and Mum were very different people nowadays, not like they were when they met, so they don't get along any more – that's what Mum said when Arthur asked why they were divorcing) and to Arthur (who is well aware that he's a clod, and that most people find this _really_ annoying even though he can't seem to stop being stupid and forgetful no matter how hard he tries).  
  
After the meeting, Douglas looks a bit furious, and Skip looks sad again even though he landed G-ERTI _brilliantly_ and saved all their lives and deserves a trophy or a big shiny certificate or something (Arthur isn't sure whether his ancient noisy printer can do shiny bits properly, but he'll do his best), and Mum is shaking like she always is after fights with Dad, and Arthur doesn't think he's _ever_ hated anyone as much as he hates his Dad right now (although maybe he has and he doesn't remember).  
  
He sits on guard, waiting for his Dad to come back from whatever clever thing Douglas is going to do to make everything better. He's found some sort of tool on the hangar floor that seems heavy enough to break heads, and now he holds on tight to it (with his gloves on, so it won't get stuck to his hands like GERT-I's door handle) and waits patiently.  
  
But it's really boring just waiting and waiting, and next thing he knows he's being woken up to go home and he realises that his Dad must have already gone while Arthur slept.  
Oh, well. He'll probably get another chance someday.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Peach schnapps seems _brilliant_ at first. It makes Arthur feel like a superhero, and he wants to stop all the bad guys in the world from doing anything to upset his friends and his Mum _ever_ again, and the best thing is that it seems like he _can_.  
  
But apparently most of the people in the pub weren't making nasty faces at Skip and Mum and Douglas after all. That was just the alcohol making his eyes go wonky. So it wasn't very nice of him to yell at all the other people and start trying to hit them all with a snooker cue while throwing the snooker balls at them with his other hand.  
  
Arthur agrees that he should be banned from peach schnapps forever. He feels a bit scared now in case he accidentally kills a non-horrible person by mistake. Most people are _great_ , and he'd hate to kill a nice person and upset all their friends and family.

  
  
***  
  
  


Mr Birling is another really rich person, and normally Arthur thinks he's _brilliant_. But Mr Birling doesn't seem to be very pleased with their plan to give him the trip he wanted – sort of – and now he's really angry and probably won't fly with them ever again. And he might sue them, which according to Mum means getting lawyers to take their money away.  
So Mum and Skip and Douglas are all really worried and sad. All of which is not at all brilliant.  
  
Arthur tries to find something on the plane that would let him kill Mr Birling quickly without making a mess, but all the rules about what you can have on a plane mean that he fails miserably.  
He wishes he'd been allowed to make that Arsenic Treatment Kit (for if anyone gets poisoned by arsenic on G-ERTI, so he could save them like they did on _Torchwood –_ his Mum was Force Eleven furious with Douglas and Martin for watching that in front of him). Apparently, the reason you can't have cyanide on a plane is because it's a poison too, so if _only_ he'd managed to sneak some onto G-ERTI then he could have put that in Mr Birling's whisky! (He'd asked Douglas about it, but Douglas doesn't have a Cyanide Pocket any more than he has a Citrus Pocket.)  
  
Mr Birling doesn't ask for any whisky anyway, as it turns out. Arthur is _very_ glad that his Mum was brilliant and convinced Mr Birling not to sue.  
  
  
***  
  
Arthur sits in the Kilkenny Airport bar, fingers in his ears, blowing bubbles in his pineapple juice through a straw in a desperate attempt to drown out the various noises from outside.  
It's not working.  
  
“ _Will_ you keep its head _still_!”  
  
“Do you have _any_ idea how strong this goose is, Douglas? This goose which is _determined_ to kill us?”  
  
“Not if I get there first. Just stretch its neck out!”  
  
“Argh!”  
  
“SKRAAAAAAHHHSSSSSssssss...”  
  
“Oh, _well_ done, _Sir_. Now we have to catch it all over _again._ What _larks_.”  
  
“My _eye_!”  
  
“Let me have a look... no _lasting_ damage that I can see, but that's going to be black in the morning. Looks like I'll be operating back.”  
  
“Ohhh...” Martin moans sadly.  
  
“Still, means you can have that wine, and it'll give you some street-cred with the students – it might even provide a little of the rarefied atmosphere Arthur craves in the airport bar! Right, it's coming towards you... NOW!”  
  
“Oof – got it!”  
  
“Okay, goose, say your last words!”  
  
“SKRAAAAAA-nk-AAAAWWWK!”  
  
“Done it! Now stretch the neck out a bit further, and -”  
  
“Ack! _Douglas_ , did you _have_ to send the blood all over my trousers? Wh- _oh_ , urgh, oh _that's_ just – you _knew_ that was going to happen, didn't you?”  
  
“Martin, I thought it was common knowledge that the recently deceased tend to evacuate their bowels?”  
  
“ _Strangely_ enough, that's not covered in most _flight_ manuals!”  
  
“What about dear old Hamilton R Leeman? Or did you think he was beginning to rot already?”  
  
“I was a bit too _busy_ to notice, since thanks to you and Carolyn I ended up spinning G-ERTI round like a top! Once more and I might have blacked out.”  
  
“Hardly _my_ fault, Martin; _I_ was advising you on correct procedure. For once, it was _Carolyn_ attempting to lead you astray of the path of professionalism.”  
  
“Couldn't you have... had a word with her? Or something? _Before_ we ended up on Shanwick ATC's blacklist as well as Madrid's?”  
  
“Nope. Making your life difficult is one of the best ways to while away a flight, and back then you deserved it even more than you do nowadays.”  
  
“...thank you. I think.”  
  
“You're welcome, if you're really _that_ desperate for praise. Right, I think the goose has finished leaving its _farewell present_ , so if I cut round here... right, stick your hand up, grab anything solid you can feel, and _pull_!”  
  
“Why _me_?”  
  
“The _excellent_ reasons for this are threefold: firstly, you're already filthy, whereas I am not; secondly, you have much smaller hands, perfect for fitting into small orifices – which, incidentally, could make you _very_ popular in certain circles if only you possessed any flirting ability whatsoever, or alternatively could gain you seasonal employment on farms in springtime; finally, and most importantly, it's _your_ ring.”  
  
“Right, yes, I suppose... yes.” Skip gives a long, despairing sigh, followed by various disgusted noises and cries of dismay.  
  
  
Arthur gives up at this point and heads off to hide in the loo (the one bit of the airport Gerry didn't show them round, though Arthur won't upset him by pointing that out).  
It's not fair that poor Goose #22 has to die for Skip to get his dad's special ring back, but, no matter how much Arthur begs and pleads, his Mum flatly refuses to have a live goose on board G-ERTI. Too messy, apparently, and not worth heating the hold.  
Since they all need dinner anyway, and all Gerry can provide is bar snacks like those cocktail olives which Arthur found out he minds a _lot_ , the pilots are going to try to spit-roast Goose #22 using only items found around Kilkenny Airport. This sounds like it might be really fun, but Arthur thinks that seeing the dead goose might make him cry. And possibly be sick, which would put everyone else off their dinner and he doesn't want to do that because pilots need plenty of food so they don't faint in mid-air (Skip did that once and it was _terrifying_ ), and also Skip is really poor and so thin that it's quite scary so it's probably best if he doesn't miss meals – Arthur doesn't think he'd be quite so good at flying aeroplanes as a skeleton.  
  
After a few minutes of interesting speculation about the piloting abilities of skeletons, Arthur remembers why he's in the loo and feels sad again.  
Which is odd, because he didn't feel sad or sick about Mr Leeman or horrible Aunt Ruth, although he did feel a bit sad about the Russian goose even though it nearly got _them_ killed too (but only by accident – Mum and Skip assured him that the Russian goose hadn't _meant_ to fly into their engine, although Douglas made a lot of probably-jokes about it being trained by various bad people).  
Then he realises that this means he isn't a horrible mad... ooh, what's the word, sounds a bit like maths... anyway, he isn't like the murderers on telly, because they don't feel bad about people dying at all, but Arthur still feels bad if the person's not horrible, and _nobody_ minds much when horrible people die, do they? So he won't end up in one of those rooms with white cushions for wallpaper, which look like they might be fun for a couple of hours because you could bounce around like in a bouncy castle, but there's nothing else in them - not even a toilet, as far as he could see – so it might get boring after a while.  
These thoughts cheer him up quite a lot, until he remembers Goose #22, which makes him sad again.  
  
  
“Arthur?”  
  
“Oh, hi Skip! Did you find your ring?”  
  
“Yes, I'm just rinsing it off now... ugh, the inside of a goose is _revolting_.”  
  
“Sorry, Skip. I would have helped, but I felt too sorry for Goose 22.”  
  
“Arthur, _I_ feel sorry for the goose, but this was the only way to get my ring back.”  
  
“I understand, Skip,” Arthur sighs, though he doesn't really. Skip still has all his memories of his dad, right? He doesn't need a ring to help him remember.  
Unless it's like one of Arthur's lists – maybe, unless Skip has something to look at as a reminder, he forgets all about his dad. But that doesn't sound like Skip. Skip can remember the whole flight manual, so remembering his dad should be easy-peasy compared to that!  
  
Odd rustling noises catch Arthur's attention.  
  
“Skip?... What are you doing?”  
  
“Putting my uniform in a shopping-bag. It's going to be _murder_ to get these stains out, what with them overlapping and so on. I'll have to go to the launderette, the students'll kill me if I break their washing machine. Er... you wouldn't happen to have any spare trousers, would you? I didn't pack any.”  
  
“No, Skip, sorry.”  
  
“Don't worry, it's fine, I'll just... um... I'm sure Douglas can think of something. Do you want me to bring you some of the bar snacks for your tea?”  
  
“Oh, thanks Skip! No olives, please!”  
  
Skip heads out, and Arthur starts wondering what makes olives taste so horrible.  
  
  
At about the point where he's got to wondering why hats had dents in them in black-and-white times (maybe people sometimes sat on them by accident, so they put dents in their hats anyway so no-one could tell whether or not their hat had been sat on?), the door opens again.  
  
“Arthur! What on Earth have you been _doing_ in here? If you've been sat on the toilet for two hours, you need either medical attention or a kick up the backside!”  
  
“MUM! This is the Gents' toilet, you can't come in!”  
  
“ _Wrong_ , as evidenced by the fact that I just have. Now, get out of here and help the other morons. Douglas is selfishly reluctant to be roasted on one side and frozen on the other while wearing his wrists to the bone, and Martin's just spent an hour plucking that blasted bird, so you'll be taking first shift on spit-turning duty.”  
  
“But Mum, I don't -”  
  
“Do you _want_ your precious 'Skip' to spend four hours incessantly turning a handle filched from a window-opening mechanism, while the heat melts the ice in the bag over his eye?”  
  
“... no.”  
  
“Right, then get out there and help! I thought you _loved_ helping?”  
  
“Oh, I _do_! Helping is _brilliant_!... it's just that I don't think I like looking at dead geese.”  
  
“Hmph. I shall be having _words_ with Herc upon our return.”  
  
“Oh dear.”  
  
“SHIFT, idiot boy!”  
  
Arthur sighs and heads outside. Well, he can keep himself from getting too sad by thinking about how he's helping to stop Skip from getting hurt. It's quite a _big_ help, but what else is Arthur good for?  
(Although, actually, he's not always much good for helping either. And he _is_ also quite good for crazy golf...)

**Author's Note:**

> It occurred to me, while listening to St Petersburg, that if Gordon's plan to steal a plane and the crew's revenge on Gordon were swapped round (i.e. from the heroes to the villains and vice-versa), the plan would seem like a Douz-esque escapade and the revenge would seem like cold-blooded torture. The only things Gordon does in St Petersburg which cement him as a nasty piece of work are:  
> a) his behaviour towards and regarding Arthur,  
> b) his very personal insults towards the pilots, who have nothing to do with his long-standing feud with Carolyn over G-ERTI and are just standing there.  
> (Although he is, absolutely, a nasty piece of work. [Later note: even before the events of Zurich.])
> 
> Most people are 'great', rather than brilliant, because it's a quote from “Newcastle” (the Trivial Pursuit scene).
> 
> The bit about the Arsenic Treatment Kit consisting of cyanide is based on how they apparently neutralise arsenic poisoning in “Torchwood – Miracle Day: Rendition”: by ripping the plane open and mixing landing-gear grease with de-icing fluid and some cyanide, then injecting the mixture into the victim (according to another fic I read: http://archiveofourown.org/works/232111). In case you're wondering: Arthur's plan for how to inject it was to empty the adrenaline out of his EpiPen and replace it with cyanide mixture. (Or, rather, to persuade Douglas to do so.)
> 
> Douglas' method for slaughtering the goose – stab through the roof of the mouth into the brain, then remove the head - is based on the one for chickens in “Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game” by John J Mettler Jr., DVM. It's probably best not to ask Douglas why he knows how to butcher chickens.  
> Incidentally, I've referred to it as Goose #22 in accordance with the deleted scene on John Finnemore's Uskerty blog post.
> 
> As another Arthur (Sir Conan Doyle) did NOT know, geese have no crops, so anything they eat would go straight into their stomachs.
> 
> Goose droppings are notoriously horrible. No wonder Carolyn doesn't want them in her aircraft.
> 
> The bit about Madrid ATC is inspired by someone's post on Tumblr (which I now can't find), which mentioned that in “Johannesburg” they requested an emergency diversion due to a fault yet they're directed to an airfield without an engineer... even though an airfield with an engineer (Albacete) is only thirty miles away. The solution proposed by this Tumblr person was that Madrid have dealt with MJN (and Martin in particular) before now, and they really don't like him. I've adopted that as my headcanon. Hope that's okay, Tumblr person, if you're reading this!
> 
> Fires draw air towards them, so the back of a spit-turner will be chilled by the draught.
> 
> If Arthur doesn't seem dark enough: in this fic, he's exhibiting all-or-nothing thinking (“splitting”) with regards to whether people are “great” or “horrible” - they are either one or the other to him (although almost everyone's the former). And he's decided that the “horrible” people should be eradicated for the good of everyone else – a task which he is perfectly willing to perform. (And to aid others in – hence why he gives advice to Maxi in “Vaduz”, innocently trusting that Maxi only wants to behead “horrible” people who are mean to him*. I couldn't work that episode into this fic, sorry!)
> 
> Another thing I couldn't work in: that bag of ice is strapped over Martin's injured eye with his own tie. Douglas' idea, obviously.  
> Also, Douglas will solve Martin's trouser problem by making a full, over-the-shoulder kilt for him out of a curtain.
> 
> *In our universe, the death penalty for treason has in fact been abolished in Liechtenstein, in 1989. If Wikipedia is to be believed.


End file.
